Contents

Daniel Pop: Well hello there, Dmitry! My name is Daniel Pop (not complete, I have two extra “secret” names). I am 26 years old. I write to you from the extraordinary (that’s not necessarily a good thing ) country of Romania.

Desktop

The association ESOP from Portugal made available two papers of original research. They concern what they call an “artificial exclusion of Linux-based laptops”. I had the opportunity to see the study earlier. Both studies can be freely accessed from ESOP. It is not easy to calculate economic effects but ESOP applies their own innovative approach for calculating losses.

Marseille, France is known for a lot of things, among them bouillabaisse stew, hostility toward centralized government and a flourishing drug trade. Yet on a recent trip there I discovered something unexpected: Ubuntu Linux running in a commercial environment. Here’s what I found, with some thoughts on where desktop Ubuntu might be headed among small businesses more generally.

Lately, I’ve been talking to several people who want to give Linux a try but they lack some confidence or have heard several myths about this OS. That reminds me of myself back in the times prior to my migration. Thus, I guess other computer users out there may be in the same situation. If you are one of them, feel free to keep reading. You might find useful information here. This is for simple, plain computer users who feel like giving Linux a chance.

Server

Historically, Check Point has run two operating systems (OSes), the Nokia IPSO OS and the SecurePlatform (SPLAT) that was on its own appliances. But Check Point acquired Nokia’s network security appliance business in 2009, and has now, at long last, merged the two OSes into a new unified OS release.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

Yesterday I reported on it appearing the 295.40 NVIDIA Linux driver effectively fell off a cliff with a range of performance regressions, stability issues, and other problems. This issue has been confirmed by NVIDIA and they’re working to address the situation.

Last week NVIDIA released the 295.40 Linux driver in order to address a high-risk security vulnerability that could allow hackers to gain access to the system memory via the GPU and the un-patched graphics driver. It turns out that the security fix is responsible for these weird issues now being experienced by a number of NVIDIA GeForce Linux users.

While the NVIDIA 295.40 Linux graphics driver closes a high-risk security vulnerability, there’s many reports coming in that the proprietary driver’s performance has effectively fallen off a cliff and also caused stability issues.

Patches were published today that introduce pinging support for Wayland clients, in an attempt to determine if a client is dead or alive. Should a client not respond to the ping request, the Wayland client’s surface is faded-out.

Intel’s Ian Romanick has made progress in his long side-project of compiling OpenGL assembly shaders to GLSL IR. He’s now up to the point of being able to run the Doom 3 binaries with this conversion work for Mesa.

Applications

Ever wondered what other music players are there in Linux world that can replace your default one? Believe me, you are pampered with choices. While the popular ones receive many coverage, there are several lesser known music players that are equally powerful. Here I have compiled a list of lesser known (and good) audio players available for Linux operating systems along with their salient features.

Xournal is an app that lets you input data your way — through a keyboard or through a stylus if you prefer to hand-write your notes. It’s a great tool for taking notes that involve text and drawings. However, it lacks the ability to import a graphic or text file, which could limit its use for some people.

Games

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

In what is seen as a major overhaul to the cross-platform application and user interface framework, Qt 5 Alpha has been released in advance of the full-blown iteration, which is expected later this year.

Swapnil: Can you tell us more about you? Where are you from and what do you do?
Daniel: I’m from Brazil, working as system analyst in a big company and a software geek in free time.

Swapnil: How did you come in contact with Free Software?
Daniel: I always hated having to re-install windows for every time it started to be slow or didn’t boot up. I also hated the user interface. When I was younger I wanted to build an OS but of course I had no idea of how hard would that be. So in high school I found out about Linux but without Internet (and with dial-up) it wasn’t a good alternative at time, so later at university with high speed Internet I brought a notebook and started to use Linux daily.

The open source model at its core is all about freedom. The freedom for users to choose and the freedom of not being locked in. That freedom also can be a lifeline for projects that otherwise wouldn’t survive. Just ask the Kubuntu project, which found new life this past week after Canonical decided it wouldn’t support it anymore.

GNOME Desktop

A review of GNOME 2 seems redundant at this point. After all, the first release was almost a decade ago, and it’s been a year since GNOME 3.0 was announced.

However, a review of Mate 1.2 is not quite the same thing. Mate is Linux Mint’s fork of GNOME 2, designed to fill the ongoing demand for this GUI that simply refuses to die.

Announced as “the traditional desktop environment,” the point of Mate is not so much what new features it introduces as how well it preserves GNOME 2 while remaining compatible with GNOME 3 — and how these efforts compare to similar efforts, like GNOME’s current fallback mode (aka “Classic GNOME”) or Linux Mint’s Cinnamon.

The GNOME Project has released version 3.4.1 of its open source Linux and Unix desktop environment. The first update to the GNOME 3.4 series offers the small improvements and bug fixes that are customary for such minor GNOME releases; the developers also updated and extended the support for different languages.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

If you have not been following the saga of the Mageia Linux distribution then you are unaware that Mageia 2 is slated to be released on May 15th. At this point the distribution is in Beta 3 testing and then will have a Release Candidate out right around May 2nd.

Jason Andersen, Director Middleware Product Line Management at Red Hat, explained to that the starting point for people to consider the Data Grid is when they have a performance or latency issue with their Java apps. The Data Grid is a key-value store that is embedded in-memory, providing a performance boost to disk-bound applications.

Fedora

The final Fedora 17 beta has just been released. Fedora is Live CD distro, so you can boot it up on a CD or in a virtual machine to check it out before doing an install. I went with the default version that uses GNOME 3 for this Sneak Peek.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Back at the last UDS Orlando summit I mentioned that Canonical was looking at finally recomending the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Linux by default for new installs rather than 32-bit. This issue is again being discussed at the last minute for the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin” release due out next week.

Martin Stadtler, director of global support and services at Canonical said his company would be working within the partnership to “help deliver enhanced engineering, online and professional services to Ubuntu partners and customers worldwide.”

Canonical has unveiled a beta version of AWSOME (Any Web Service Over ME), an open source proxy service that helps users who currently use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate to OpenStack’s cloud computing platform. AWSOME will be included as an install option in the server edition of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which is scheduled to be released later this month.

Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution is making a big push into the enterprise and cloud, where it will go head to head with long-time enterprise Linux incumbent Red Hat and its Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. However Shuttleworth is not sure that Red Hat’s pricing structure will make the firm competitive.

Flavours and Variants

Bodhi Linux is a very interesting Linux distro. It is generally based on Ubuntu but unlike the other Ubuntu-based distros which usually try to give users a newbie-friendly and work-out-of-the-box experience, Bodhi is very minimalistic. By default, Bodhi comes with very few necessity applications pre-installed so users will have to choose the other applications to install. Beside the simplicity, another special thing about Bodhi is Enlightment – the desktop environment. I myself have been using Linux for serveral years but I never tried Englightment before ( as I just recently heard about it) so 2 days ago, I decided to try Bodhi Linux on my Sony laptop. This article is my review about Bodhi Linux after 2 days of playing and testing it.

The Trisquel project has announced the release of Trisquel 5.5, code-named “Brigantia”. This is the first version of the distribution that is based on the GNOME 3 desktop environment, although it is using the 2D fallback mode option by default. Trisquel GNU/Linux is approved by the FSF as a Free Software distribution and as such cannot rely on a 3D composited desktop like Gnome Shell, as many 3D drivers for Linux are proprietary in nature. Trisquel 5.5 also uses version 3.0.0 of the Linux-libre kernel, which is a parallel distribution of the regular Linux kernel that aims to remove all non-free components and firmware.

I believe that what ever a computer users requirement are the Ubuntu Family (official derivatives) have them covered and one such beautiful member of the family is Xubuntu. Xubuntu comes with lightweight and highly customisable Xfce running at the current stable release 4.8.1. The default look of Xubuntu 12.04 is quite appealing.

With the first shipment of Raspberry Pi computers, a new wave of computer programming may just be born. A group of schoolchildren in Leeds, U.K. will be the first to get a batch of the tiny computers, followed by fulfillment of the first orders by April 20.

It’s been the most highly anticipated launch in the history of development boards, but one of the most problem-ridden too. Originally unveiled early last year with a suggested launch schedule of September 2011, the Raspberry Pi single-board computer has proven a beast to get out of the door – but the first retail models are finally landing in customers’ hands this week.

Phones

Android

SAN JOSE – Google is expected to boost its support in Android for cores from MIPS Technologies, giving the company a badly needed boost in the hot smartphone and tablet sector.

The Android native developers’ kit is expected to start bundling a GNU compiler for MIPS within weeks. Google is expected to bundle full support for the MIPS application binary interface in all Android code and libraries, starting with a future Android release in the next several months.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

I was surprised by the beginning of the Economist’s article “Error Message” (based on the IADB study) that says the Peruvian Una Laptop por Niño project “did not accomplish anything in particular”. The IADB study clearly stated that the project “substantially increased use of computers both at school and at home”, “positive effects were found in general cognitive skills” and improved “competence in operating laptops in tasks related to core applications (like a word processor) and searching for information on the computer”.

In 2010, Guido Appenzeller left his professor’s job at Stanford University, to start up a new company that would expand the OpenFlow networking technology he helped to create. This week, Appenzeller is taking the stage as a presenter at the Open Networking Summit in a session titled, Opening Up Your Network to Cloud Innovation with SDN.

Web Browsers

Chrome

Google attempted to introduce a new approach to computing when it first launched Chrome OS in 2010. The operating system consists of little more than a fullscreen Web browser perched atop a rigorously-hardened Linux environment. The platform makes some unusual trade-offs, eschewing conventional native applications in exchange for bulletproof security and low-maintenance stateless computing.

SaaS

In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License, free and open source software (FOSS) have become pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, and more can be found in large numbers of enterprises across the globe. And open source is now increasingly undergirding cloud computing as well.

For programs, we make a distinction between free and nonfree (proprietary). More precisely, this distinction applies to a program that you have a copy of: either you have the four freedoms for your copy or you don’t.

An activity (such as a service) doesn’t exist in the form of copies, so it’s not possible to have a copy or to make copies. As a result, the four freedoms that define free software don’t make sense for services.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

News about the lawsuit between Oracle (which owns Java) and Google (which uses aspects of Java in Android) are resonating far and loud at the moment. At this point in the article, I should summarise the story: the trouble is that a summary at this point is impossible. The main problem is with Oracle, and their inability to understand free software.

Education

BSD

In the 1980s, BSD was just another leg of the Unix table. DEC used it as the basis for Ultrix, and Sun Microsystems based its SunOS on it. But BSD today is more about open-source development than it was in the 1980s. When Unix System V version 4 shipped in the early 1980s, the BSD community began to focus more on the desktop than on the server, and the many varieties of BSD were born.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

In my past several articles, I’ve looked at various packages to do all kinds of science. Sometimes, however, there just isn’t a tool to solve a particular problem. That’s the great thing about science. There is always something new to discover and study. But, this means it’s up to you to develop the software tools you need to do your analysis. This article takes a look at the GNU Scientific Library, or GSL. This library is the Swiss Army library of routines that you will find useful in your work.

First, you need to to get a copy of GSL and install it on your system. Because it is part of the GNU Project, it is hosted at http://www.gnu.org/s/gsl. You always can download and build from the source code, but all major distributions should have packages available. For example, on Debian-based systems, you need to install the package libgsl0-dev to develop your code and gsl-bin to run that code. GSL is meant for C and C++, so you also need a compiler. Most of you probably already are familiar with GCC, so I stick with that here.

We have done a lot of refactoring in GIMP over the last ten years, but its innermost pixel manipulating core was still basically unchanged since GIMP 1.2 days. We didn’t bother to do anything about it, because the long term goal was to do all this stuff with GEGL, when GEGL was ready. Now GEGL has been ready for quite a while, and the GEGL porting got assigned a milestone. Was it 2.10, 3.0, 3.2, I don’t remember. We thought it would take us forever until it’s done, because nobody really had that kind of time.

Public Services/Government

In the Czech municipality of Grygov open source is used almost everywhere. It covers most of the applications used by the administration, offers public Internet access across the entire village and it is the basis for an SMS gateway linking the regional fire department with the volunteers in the village. The software even keeps parents up to date on changes in school schedules.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced one of the most progressive open source policies in the US government. They reiterated the current OMB and DOD guidance by making open source commercial software, but they also went one step further: code they write is open by default. I am totally impressed.

Programming

The Dart team has announced the first global Dart hackathon. The event will taken place between the end of April and the beginning of May in fourteen cities worldwide. Locations include Mountain View in the US (27-28 April), and London and Prague (27-29 April) in Europe. A date for the London hackathon has not yet been announced.

Standards/Consortia

Security

Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that “If we can’t feel your nipples, they must be a bomb”, the agency’s craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra “If you don’t like it, don’t fly!”

[...]

Anyone who rode the bus in Houston, Texas during the 2-10pm shift last Friday faced random bag checks and sweeps by both drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs (the latter being only canines necessary if “preventing terrorism” were the actual intent of these raids), all courtesy of a joint effort between TSA VIPR nests and three different local and county-level police departments. The new Napolitano doctrine, then: “Show us your papers, show us everything you’ve got, justify yourself or you’re not allowed to go about your everyday business.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

North America has a number of LNG export projects underway, mostly in Kitimat, British Columbia. But yesterday the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the first application for such a facility in the lower 48. Until these projects are operational, North American natural gas will continue to be trapped by geography. And, given that prices here are near $2.00 per million btu, I thought it would be enlightening to pull the most recent data chart from FERC, showing what customers pay for the same amount of NG, in liquified form, around the world. | see: World LNG Estimated April 2012 Landed Prices.

Robert Lantos, the canny, creative, and famously combative movie producer who once stood atop the Canadian film and television business as the chairman and CEO of Alliance Communications, has filed suit in a bitter custody dispute over six of his films which he says were sold to an international distributor without his permission.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein’s compensation increased 14.5 percent to $16.2 million in 2011 despite a sharp decline in profits and share price during the year, leaving the bank open to more attacks on its pay policies.

Blankfein’s pay boost includes stock awards from previous years that vested in 2011, and therefore does not reflect the amount that Goldman’s board awarded him strictly for the company’s performance last year.

The sweetheart deals just keep coming. Lawbreakers at one bank after another are let off the hook as their shareholders write a check. And then they go out and repeat the illegal behavior they promised not to do in the last settlement.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this keeps happening over at the SEC — especially as long as Robert Khuzami continues to serve as Director of the Commission’s Division of Enforcement.

Internet/Net Neutrality

Die Danish EU Presidency is on the scrouge. For the EU Future Internet Assembly they raise fees from lobbyists. Makes me wonder if they fear EU presidency conferences become the new food stamps. I find it unpleasant that even a low walled garden would exclude parts of the Dutch population e.g. students from participation.

DRM

While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can’t freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them. They’ve even had their ebooks deleted by companies without their permission. It continues to be a major issue in the area of movies and video too.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

David Martin, the rapporteur of ACTA at the EU Parliament, has issued his draft report recommending the Parliament to reject ACTA. This is an important step toward effectively killing this dangerous agreement. But while denouncing ACTA, the rapporteur nevertheless supports the 15 year-long war on culture sharing. He also carefully avoid to stress the need for a positive reform of copyright, so as to protect fundamental freedoms online and fostering access to culture and knowledge.

In the next few weeks, the EU Parliament will continue to work on ACTA, the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, ahead of its final vote around the summer. This is a crucial moment for the citizen mobilization against ACTA, which will have to resist the growing pressure that the copyright lobbies put on the Parliament. Beyond the rejection of ACTA, the whole EU copyright enforcement policy needs to be revised. Only a reform of copyright can protect once and for all fundamental rights online of EU citizens and push the online creative economy in a new direction, away from blind repression. Here is a state of play on the next steps of the mobilization in the European Parliament.

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The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again